A recent study on American wine purchasing shows that glass wine bottles play a key role in determining which wine is purchased. Marketers considering dropping glass in favor of some other packaging material would do well to analyze the study-perhaps even duplicate it in their own product categories-before making a move.

Oregon voters decisively rejected a ballet initiative that would have expanded the current bottle-deposit law, which applies only to beer and carbonated beverages, to include more than 800 products, including paperboard packaging containers.

Since October, Bud drinkers across most of Latin America found the venerable brew in a fluted aluminum can. St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch is rolling out the new 12-oz, 211-dia can as a permanent replacement for standard cans of Budweiser in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica and Belize.

Though common by now in the U.S., red lagers are new to Australia. So when Lloyd Products of Regency Park, Adelaide, Australia, launched its Red Ant lager last summer, it wanted packaging that would draw attention to this unusual product.